SUPPLY CHAIN ARTICLES

  • What Violin Making Can Teach Us About mRNA Therapeutic Quality

    Managing the mRNA supply chain and working in mRNA process development may not look anything like the work a luthier does to hew an instrument from an ancient spruce tree. But violin craftmanship actually serves as a fantastic metaphor for the challenging work the mRNA therapeutics space is tackling in sourcing and qualifying raw materials and optimizing the critical IVT reaction.

  • FDA Sets Recommendations For Predicting Dangerous Nitrosamine Impurities

    The FDA recently published a final guidance that sets a recommended framework for predicting the potential of nitrosamine drug substance-related impurities.

  • Picasso, Pick-Up Lines, & Personalized Medicine: mRNA's Path Forward

    Overall, my presentation on what the mRNA industry can learn from the artist Picasso singled out a few specific areas from which I felt our industry could garner greater inspiration and operational prowess. But given how “collaborative” many of these sources of inspiration are, I’ve introduced each of my takeaways with a surprisingly relevant (albeit bad) art-themed pick-up line. After all, if there’s one sector that knows it takes more than one to “tango,” it’s the mRNA industry.

  • Innovations In The Oligonucleotide Supply Chain: Regulatory Considerations For Materials, Manufacturing, And Lifecycle Control

    Oligonucleotide therapeutics have rapidly advanced into late-stage and commercial development, shifting regulatory focus toward the maturity of manufacturing and supply chain control rather than therapeutic novelty. Regulatory success now depends on how effectively sponsors translate innovative chemistries into well-characterized, scalable, and sustainable materials and processes.

  • Moderna & The Global mRNA Supply Chain: Regulatory Lessons Learned

    One of the most important reminders I took away from Moderna’s experiences ushering its mRNA vaccine onto the global market is that a commercial manufacturing process must also be accompanied by a commercially ready supply chain. Though sufficient physical volumes of each raw material and a redundant supplier network are necessities, physical scale is not the only “CQA” for which we must account when commercializing our supply chain. 

  • Inside Alnylam's Playbook For High Volume siRNA Production

    As one of the first companies to establish a chemoenzymatic ligation platform, Alnylam's Maines and Nechev are in the perfect position to espouse wisdom on the practical aspects and remaining challenges of implementing enzymatic ligation at a large scale. Here in this installment, Maines and Nechev outline what they’ve learned thus far about the science of enzymatic ligation, while also paying credence to the unknowns and existing barriers that, as a frontrunner, Alnylam will inevitably (but willingly) be tasked with facing in the future.

SUPPLY CHAIN VIDEOS

Advancing RNA Live panelists delve into advancements in IVT technology, homing in on innovations like bead-based purification, improved enzymes, and modular manufacturing systems.

There remain a lot of gaps in our understanding of plasmid quality, particularly for high-quality mRNA production (as opposed to viral vector production). In this segment of a recent Advancing RNA Live panel, speakers Adi Nair, Tyler Goodwin, and April Sena highlight their biggest questions around plasmid DNA quality, as well as the pros and cons of some of the analytical methods upon which we’re relying most heavily today to assess plasmid quality.

In this opening Advancing RNA Live clip, NanoVation Therapeutics’ Dominik Witzigmann and Stealth Co’s John Zuris share the scientific advancements they’ve been watching most keenly in the LNP space, as well as some of the evolutions they’re seeing in the overall quality of our RNA-LNP products.

In this final segment of an Advancing RNA Live discussion, panelists April Sena, Tyler Goodwin, and Adi Nair share the most meaningful and manageable improvements the industry can be making today to upstream and downstream processes to drive down mRNA-LNP COGS.In this final segment of an Advancing RNA Live discussion, panelists April Sena, Tyler Goodwin, and Adi Nair share the most meaningful and manageable improvements the industry can be making today to upstream and downstream processes to drive down mRNA-LNP COGS.

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